“[Paolo Uccello] would remain the long night in his study to work out the vanishing points of his perspective, and when summoned to his bed by his wife replied in the celebrated words: ‘How fair a thing is this perspective.’ Being endowed be nature with a sophisticated and subtle disposition, he took pleasure in nothing save in investigating difficult and impossible questions of perspective . . . When engaged in these matters, Paolo would remain alone in his house almost like a hermit, with hardly any intercourse, for weeks and months, not allowing himself to be seen . . . By using up his time on these fancies he remained more poor than famous during his lifetime.”

Alyson Shotz’s work Ecliptic, on view through May 27 as part of the Intersections contemporary art series, makes me think of a 560-year-old Italian Renaissance perspectival drawing. Except Uccello never worked in yarn. The modern is always rooted in the past. Be sure to see this installation–you may leave saying to yourself, “How fair a thing is this perspective.” May she become more famous than poor.

Four works by Jorge Pardo on display on the second floor of the museum's Goh Annex. Photo: Sarah Osborne Bender

Two artists with work currently on display at The Phillips Collection, Jorge Pardo and Intersections artist Alyson Shotz, have been selected to design and fill public spaces in a new hotel, the Alexander, to be built in downtown Indianapolis. This story is noteworthy not only because of the beautiful possibilities, but because of the unique nature of this project’s inception: a partnership between the Indianapolis Museum of Art and the real estate developer constructing the hotel, as reported in the New York Times.